Purpose: The management of pain following cancer-related surgeries involves the use of opioid analgesics. Nevertheless, there is little evidence characterizing the utility and prescription patterns of opioids after these procedures. Our primary aim was to identify patients from three types of cancer surgery who were overprescribed with opioids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOff-resonant interaction of fluctuating photons in a resonator with a qubit increases the qubit dephasing rate. We use this effect to measure a small average number of intracavity photons that are coherently or thermally driven. For spectral resolution, we do this by subjecting the qubit to a Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill sequence and record the qubit dephasing rate for various periods between qubit π pulses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The ability to provide person-centred care (PCC) is an essential skill for doctors and requires therapeutic empathy. We sought to evaluate a novel teaching approach to understand how medical students' personal reflections on an older person impact their views about PCC and frailty.
Approach: We designed a teaching session where students prepared an image and story about an older person they knew.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl
October 2023
Polymerization induced microphase separation (PIMS) is a strategy used to develop unique nanostructures with highly useful morphologies through the microphase separation of emergent block copolymers during polymerization. In this process, nanostructures are formed with at least two chemically independent domains, where at least one domain is composed of a robust crosslinked polymer. Crucially, this synthetically simple method is readily used to develop nanostructured materials with the highly coveted co-continuous morphology, which can also be converted into mesoporous materials by selective etching of one domain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patients with prostate cancer are offered a wide range of treatments from radiation therapy to chemotherapy to surgery. When giving radiation therapy, SpaceOAR hydrogel has been part of the standard treatment for the last decade to reduce unnecessary radiation exposure to the rectum. In rare cases, SpaceOAR may be placed but the patient cannot go through with radiation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSolid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) offer several advantages compared to their liquid counterparts, and much research has focused on developing SPEs with enhanced mechanical properties while maintaining high ionic conductivities. The recently developed polymerization-induced microphase separation (PIMS) technique offers a straightforward pathway to fabricate bicontinuous nanostructured materials in which the mechanical properties and conductivity can be independently tuned. In this work SPEs with tunable mechanical properties and conductivities are prepared via digital light processing 3D printing, exploiting the PIMS process to achieve nanostructured ion-conducting materials for energy storage applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe development of advanced solid-state energy-storage devices is contingent upon finding new ways to produce and manufacture scalable, high-modulus solid-state electrolytes that can simultaneously provide high ionic conductivity and robust mechanical integrity. In this work, an efficient one-step process to manufacture solid polymer electrolytes composed of nanoscale ion-conducting channels embedded in a rigid crosslinked polymer matrix via Digital Light Processing 3D printing is reported. A visible-light-mediated polymerization-induced microphase-separation approach is utilized, which produces materials with two chemically independent nanoscale domains with highly tunable nanoarchitectures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInterchangeability between biological medicines and biosimilars, and subsequent substitution by pharmacists represent an important opportunity for costs savings for health care systems. Because biological medicines are complex products, the expert role of the pharmacist to inform patients and support physicians is indispensable. However, regulations on substitution of biosimilars differ around the globe, such that a substitution that is allowed in one country may be forbidden in another.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuantum many-body systems display rich phase structure in their low-temperature equilibrium states. However, much of nature is not in thermal equilibrium. Remarkably, it was recently predicted that out-of-equilibrium systems can exhibit novel dynamical phases that may otherwise be forbidden by equilibrium thermodynamics, a paradigmatic example being the discrete time crystal (DTC).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurrently, there are no straightforward methods to 3D print materials with nanoscale control over morphological and functional properties. Here, a novel approach for the fabrication of materials with controlled nanoscale morphologies using a rapid and commercially available Digital Light Processing 3D printing technique is demonstrated. This process exploits reversible deactivation radical polymerization to control the in-situ-polymerization-induced microphase separation of 3D printing resins, which provides materials with complex architectures controllable from the macro- to nanoscale, resulting in the preparation of materials with enhanced mechanical properties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral respiratory illness caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and has led to one of the world's largest infectious disease outbreaks. COVID-19 first emerged in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019, and the emergence was especially concerning to the U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRAFT facilitated digital light projection 3D printing of polymeric materials provides a convenient and facile route for inducing post-fabrication transformations via reactivation of dormant chain transfer agents. In this work, we report the use of a Norrish type I photoinitiator in conjunction with a RAFT agent to produce a variety of open-air 3D printable resins that rapidly cure under visible light irradiation. The photoinitiator-RAFT system polymerizes extremely quickly and provides high 3D printing build rates of up to 9.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe majority of marketed seasonal influenza vaccines are prepared using viruses that are chemically inactivated and treated with a surfactant. Treating with surfactants has important consequences: it produces 'split viruses' by solubilizing viral membranes, stabilizes free membrane proteins and ensures a low level of reactogenicity while retaining high vaccine potency. The formulation stability and potency of split influenza vaccines are largely determined by the specifics of this 'splitting' process; namely, the consequent conformational changes of proteins and interactions of solubilized particles, which may form aggregates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo prototype cyclones were the subjects of a comparative research campaign with a diesel particulate matter sampler (DPMS) that consists of a respirable cyclone combined with a downstream impactor. The DPMS is currently used in mining environments to separate dust from the diesel particulate matter and to avoid interferences in the analysis of integrated samples and direct-reading monitoring in occupational environments. The sampling characteristics of all three devices were compared using ammonium fluorescein, diesel, and coal dust aerosols.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin (IL)-6, serum amyloid A protein (SAA) and total homocysteine (tHcy) have been associated with the increased likelihood of cardiovascular events, the relative or combined utility of these biomarkers in predicting atherosclerosis and death in an angiography cohort is unknown.
Methods: A cohort of 1117 consecutive patients (797 men and 320 women), referred to 2 Vancouver teaching hospitals for selective coronary angiography, was recruited between 1993 and 1995. Angiography results were obtained for 1019 patients.
Purpose: To assess the benefit of androgen deprivation (AD) and its optimal duration in patients with prostate cancer treated with external beam radiotherapy, who present with prostate-specific antigen levels > 20 ng/mL.
Methods And Materials: A total of 307 patients treated with external beam radiotherapy, AD, and presenting with a PSA level > 20 ng/mL were identified from the Prostate Cancer Outcomes Initiative database of the British Columbia Cancer Agency. Androgen deprivation was defined as short term (ST-AD, < 12 months) or long term (LT-AD, > or = 12 months).
An experimental system was developed for the rapid measurement of the aspiration/transfer efficiency of aerosol samplers in a wind tunnel. We attempted to measure the aspiration and particle transfer characteristics of two inlets commonly used for sampling airborne Particulate Matter (PM): the 'Total Suspended Particulate' or TSP inlet, and the louvered 'dichotomous sampler inlet' typically used in sampling PM10 or PM2.5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVariation in the APOA5 gene has been shown to be associated with triglyceride levels in several independent population studies. It was our objective to determine if a relationship existed between selected genotypes or haplotypes of the APOA5 gene and findings on selective coronary angiography (SCA) in an independent cohort. The Vancouver SCA Cohort consists of individuals referred for angiography between 1993 and 1995.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn order to understand and control the risks presented by inhalation of dust at work, research over many years has been focused on understanding how dust present in the air enters the human nose and mouth during the act of breathing. For health-related dust exposure monitoring, sampling devices are needed that collect the same 'inhalable fraction' of dust as the human head. Mark and Vincent's 1986 paper presented a study that has contributed more than any other to the practical realization of this inhalable dust concept.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Toxicol Environ Health A
July 2002
Several models have been published for calculating blood-air, tissue-air, or tissue-blood partition coefficients of volatile organic chemicals in human or rat tissues, from functions of their octanol-water partition coefficients or solubilities in vegetable oil and water. In this work, the relative accuracy, strengths, and limitations of the various models are examined. Comparison of predicted human tissue-air and tissue-blood partition coefficients with experimental values has been made for 12 chemicals, covering a wide range of lipophilicity (acetone, isopropanol, diethylether, methylene dichloride, benzene, toluene, trichloroethylene, trichloroethane, n-pentane, cyclohexane, n-hexane, and n-heptane).
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